How Responsiveness Affects Players\u27 Perception in Digital Games

Digital games with realistic virtual characters have become very popular. The ability for players to promptly control their character is a crucial feature of these types of games, be it platform games, first-person shooters, or role-playing games. Controller latencies, meaning delays in the responsiveness of a player’s character, for example due to extensive computations or to network latencies, can considerably reduce the player’s enjoyment of a game. In this paper, we present a thorough analysis of the consequences of such delays on the player’s experience across three parts of a game with different levels of difficulty. We investigate the effects of responsiveness on the player’s enjoyment, performance, and perception of the game, as well as the player’s adaptability to delays. We find that responsiveness is very important for the player as delays affect the player’s enjoyment of the game as well as the player’s performance. A quick responsiveness becomes essential for more challenging tasks

Trade-Offs Between Responsiveness and Naturalness for Player Characters

Real-time animation controllers are fundamental for animating characters in response to player input. However, the design of such controllers requires making trade-offs between the naturalness of the character’s motions and the promptness of the character’s response. In this paper, we investigate the effects of such tradeoffs on the players’ enjoyment, control, satisfaction, and opinion of the character in a simple platform game. In our first experiment, we compare three controllers having the same responsiveness, but varying levels of naturalness. In the second experiment, we compare three controllers having increasing realism but at the expense of decreased responsiveness. Not surprisingly, our least responsive controller negatively affects players’ performance and perceived ability to control the character. However, we also find that players are most satisfied with their own performance using our least natural controller, in which the character moves around the environment in a static pose; that differences in animation can significantly alter players’ enjoyment with responsiveness being equal; and that players do not report increased motion quality with our most natural controller, despite viewers outside of a game context rating the same controller as significantly more natural than our other conditions

Player Perception of Delays and Jitter in Character Responsiveness

Response lag in digital games is known to negatively affect a player’s game experience. Particularly with networked multiplayer games, where lag is typically unavoidable, the impact of delays needs to be well understood so that its effects can be mitigated. In this paper, we investigate two aspects of lag independently: latency (constant delay) and jitter (varying delay). We evaluate how latency and jitter each affect a player’s enjoyment, frustration, performance, and experience as well as the extent to which players can adjust to such delays after a few minutes of gameplay. We focus on a platform game where the player controls a virtual character through a world. We find that delays up to 300ms do not impact the players’ experience as long as they are constant. When jitter was added to a delay of 200ms, however, the lag was noticed by participants more often, hindered players’ ability to improve with practice, increased how often they failed to reach the goal of the game, and reduced the perceived motion quality of the character

Towards a new ITU-T recommendation for subjective methods evaluating gaming QoE

This paper reports on activities in Study Group 12 of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU-T SG12) to define a new Recommendation on subjective evaluation methods for gaming Quality of Experience (QoE). It first resumes the structure and content of the current draft which has been proposed to ITU-T SG12 in September 2014 and then critically discusses potential gaming content and evaluation methods for inclusion into the upcoming Recommendation. The aim is to start a discussion amongst experts on potential evaluation methods and their limitations, before finalizing a Recommendation. Such a recommendation might in the end be applied by non -expert users, hence wrong decisions in the evaluation design could negatively affect gaming QoE throughout the evaluation

Characterizing Experience and Regulation of Sexual Harassment Experiences Among Female Gamers in First-Person Shooters

Female gamers frequently experience harassment from other players while playing online first person shooters and are frequently alienated from the online gaming community. Sexism within the video game community also manifests through the underrepresentation and sexualization of female characters, both of which have been shown to increase sexist attitudes (Bushman and Laroi, 2019, Dill et al 2008). The present study examined harassment towards women while playing online video games, as well as effects of harassment on mental health and gender masking behaviors. Additionally, the present study examined how the gender ratio of characters within a game affects harassment towards female players. First, I hypothesized that women playing online first person shooter games in which there is a higher percentage of female characters will experience less harassment than games with fewer female characters. I also hypothesized that the amount of harassment women face while playing a first person shooter game is correlated negatively with mental health outcomes, such that more frequent harassment will be associated with poorer mental health (e.g., depressive symptoms and anxiety). Lastly, I hypothesized that women who more readily experience harassment while playing a first person shooter game will be more likely to conceal their gender and engage in other protective behaviors to avoid harassment. Results indicated no effect of gender ratio on harassment. I also found no correlation between harassment and mental health. However, there were strong relationships between harassment and gender masking, such that female players who experienced more harassment were more likely to mask their gender from other players. The results highlight several ways in which women are affected by sexism within the video game community. Additional implications and limitations are discussed

Issues in the study of virtual world social movements

Virtual worlds are online three-dimensional worlds that are often constructed to look much like the real world. As more people begin to use these virtual worlds, virtual communities are emerging enabling various social activities and social interactions to be conducted online. Based on a literature review of social movements, virtual communities and virtual worlds, this paper suggests a framework to guide IS research into this new and exciting area

Advertising effectiveness of interactivity with real, transfigured, fictional and incongruent brands in narrative video games

Producción CientíficaPurpose - One of the problems advertising has faced has been the rising counter-argumentation in traditional media. The search for new pull marketing strategies in a culture of digital entertainment requires new and more effective forms of product placement. The authors investigate the advertising effectiveness of new types of branding in products of the interactive digital entertainment culture. Design/methodology/approach - The research consisted in placing several types of real and fictional brands in five versions of a narrative video game. Over a two-week period, participants were tested on counter-argumentation, interactivity with the static and dynamic advertising stimuli and advertising effectiveness (N=274). Findings - The results show the cognitive, affective, and conative advertising effectiveness of transfigured brands compared to real and fictional brands. The transfigured brands have the advantage over fictional brands in that, during the enjoyment of the videogame, the consumer makes a semantic transfer to the real brand. This processing has a high advertising effectiveness as it induces processing of real brands without provoking counter-argumentation. Originality - This is the first research that explores and conceptualizes the phenomenon of brand transfiguration, which had not been investigated until now and which opens new applied possibilities for brand placement. Practical implications - Interactivity with transfigured brands contributes to create experience and engagement with the brand. Moreover, as they are well integrated in the content, they avoid counter-argumentation. That is why they open an investment space of interest for the advertiser.Comunicación Audiovisual y PublicidadLaboratorio LipsiMedi

Localization in educational mobile games: Multiple case studies of educational mobile games in the emerging market, Vietnam

The thesis studies the localization/globalization of educational mobile games in emerging markets, particularly Vietnam. In detail, the thesis investigates how an educational mobile game company balances their localization strategy in the pressure of Global Integration-Local Responsiveness (GI-LR), the drivers behind the localization choice and level, and how players react to the strategy. The study reviews and summaries literature review related to GI-LR for MNEs and localization strategy for born-globals and suggests a framework for educational mobile game companies. The literature review indicated that while born-globals try to standardize their products, due to external and internal drivers, they have to adapt to local responsiveness on some levels. The suggested framework indicated that there are three levels of localization for educational game companies: simple, complex, and blending; besides standardization strategy. The thesis focuses on external drivers such as cultural differences and customer demands and studies how this affects the localization level of each game company. The thesis employs multiple case studies to compare different educational game companies that have different localization levels and serve different customer demands. The data collected from both America and Vietnam reviews similarities and differences in how users of each region perceive the games, react to the localization level of the games and suggest game improvements. The study figured out that cultural differences, especially language, and customer demands can change the level of localization of educational game companies. The level of localization can extend to one or several elements of the game. Users from Vietnam noticed some limitations of local language courses and suggested having their local language to be able to understand some games. In the context of emerging markets which have diverse culture and demands, educational game companies should do intense market research in advance to check whether they need to alter the localization level, reducing or raising the total cost of expanding to emerging markets